WELLINGTON. May 4: Forty-five years after conquering Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary said today he would be glad to share credit for reaching the summit with George Mallory, who may have made it in 1924, reports AP.

Members of an expedition have found the body of Mallory near the peak.

Eight climbers have been looking for the bodies of the Englishmen, who disappeared in 1924. and a camera that could contain pictures proving they reached the summit 29 years before Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.

They found the body Saturday but haven't yet found the camera or evidence to prove they had reached the summit.

The body was found about 600 meters from the windblown 8.848-meter summit.

Hillary said today he doubted Mallory and Irvine, who were not using oxygen, reached the top.

'We simply of course have no ici^a as to whether he was overcome at that altitude, which could easily happen, or that he had in fact carried on. reached the summit and then fallen on the descent.

"My feeling perhaps is that, well. I think it's more likely that he probably did not reach the summit. But who knows?" Hillary said from Auckland in a telephone interview with an Australian radio station.

"It's one thing to reach the top. but to complete the job you've got to get (back) to the bottom.” Hillary told the Dominion, a Wellington. New Zealand newspaper.

"For 45 years I've been accepted as the hero sort of stuff, so I wouldn't feel too terrible if he had his special spell as well.

"I've always regarded him with great admiration as the original hero of Everest."

Mallory's grandson said to-

day he believed his grandfather was descending when he fell, but had no opinion on whether he had reached the summit.

"I guess my opinion would depend very much on exactly where the body was found," said the younger George Mallory, who lives in Mooroopna in

Australia's Victoria state.

"I can't imagine that he would have been on his way up at the time he died because by then he would have survived through to the end of the day. I'm pretty sure," said Mallory who himself climbed Everest in 1995.